Kerenhappuch Norman was born abt 1692 in Spotsylvania County, VA to Isaac Norman (1682-1748) & Frances Courtney (1684-1752).
A monument was erected in her honor at the Guilford Court House National Military Park and was dedicated on July 4, 1902.
Historians can not agree on her exact birth year some have it as 1715 so it as About.
She married James Turner Sr. 30 Jan 1732 in Spotsylvania County, VA. (1705-1793). He was the son of a prominent family and a tobacco planter, in Spotsylvania County, Virginia in 1733. Deed records show that following their wedding Isaac Norman gave 50 pounds and 100 acres of his home plantation to his daughter and her new husband James.
This is where they raised their first few children, before relocating to Culpeper County in 1749, which was surveyed by George Washington. They had become devoted friends with him,
Sarah Turner 1732-1806
Susannah Kerenhappuch Turner 1734-1793
Elijah Turner 1734
Mary Norman Turner 1737-1835 Married: Charles Morehead
James Turner Jr, 1741-1809
Elizabeth Turner Married: Joseph Morehead
Kerenhappuch Turner
Nancy Turner
Nathan Turner
In 1765 They sold their home and land and moved to Halifax County, VA. James Turner Sr. died there in 1773. Kerenhappuch was still living there when the Revolutionary War broke out. They were Patriots and James Jr. joined the Virginia Militia where he became Captain. Kerenhappuch was a skilled rider and was known to on an occasion carry dispatches for the army, and even through the lines of the unsuspecting British. She told her sons and grandsons that if they were wounded they should get word to her and she would come to care for them.
Battle of Guilford Court House
Captain Turner’s company went south and in March of 1781 the company was posted to guard duties in Guilford County, North Carolina. Guilford Court House was the seat of government for the county and it was toward this site that the 1900-man army of British Lord Charles Cornwallis was marching on March 15, 1781.
Unbeknownst to Cornwallis, a 4400-man army of colonial troops under Major General Nathanael Greene was lying in wait, well hidden in the dense forest foliage.
The ensuing battle was fierce; when it was over more than 27% of the British had suffered injury or death, compared to only 6% for the Americans who claimed victory in the battle. Although neither side gained a decisive advantage, the British loss of troops was so great that it forced them to abandon the Carolinas, and this eventually led to their surrender at Yorktown on October 19, 1781.
Source: Women in the American Revolution:
Eight members of the Kerenhappuch Norman-Turner family fought in the Battle of Guilford Court House. Her son and seven grandsons and her son received a very serious wound. When she got word, she hopped onto a horse and rode to the battlefield from her home in Virginia.
Placing her son James Jr. in a log cabin on the battlefield in a crude bed on the floor, Kerenhappuch secured tubs in which she bored holes. He had a huge hole in his leg. These tubs she suspended from the rafters and filled them with cool water from the ‘Bloody Run’ which flows nearby. The constant dripping of water on the ghastly wounds lowered his fever and saved her son’s life. She also nursed other soldiers who were wounded during the battle.
Kerenhappuch lived until 1805 dying in Richmond County, North Carolina.
Excerpt of the address at the unveiling of the Kerenhappuch Turner monument at the Guilford Court House Military Park on July 4, 1902:
It is for me to tell you something of the brave woman in honor of whose memory we today unveil on this sacred spot the first monument ever erected on American soil to a Revolutionary heroine – its granite crowned with a handsome statue, and emblazoned with words of everlasting bronze. In song and in story – ‘in thoughts that breathe and in words that burn’ – have been told again and again the story of the virtues, the brave deeds, the sacrifice, the suffering, and the heroism of the men who fought, bled, and died in that terrible war for Independence; but the story of the privation, the suffering, the daring, and the dying of the grand reserve army of that war is yet untold and unsung.
The women, by their lonely hearthstones, surrounded by helpless children, in the primeval forests, without mail or telegraph or railroad to bring them tidings of the absent loved ones their griefs, their sorrow, their suspense, their anxiety, their agony their death borne without a murmur. They died not in the exciting and exulting rush of battle. Theirs was the long slow, wasting, lingering death – a thousand deaths. Sometimes it was cold-blooded murder; sometimes it was the cold, piercing, cutting dagger of helpless grief; and sometimes they fell under the crushing burden of domestic care and trouble.
Their battles were fought in the darkness and loneliness and silence of their homes. They heard not the martial music which thrilled heroes; they felt not the elbow touch which heroes feel in the mad rush of battle. There was never a shout or cheer to give them courage and strength. There were no medals awarded to them; no promotions were bestowed to stimulate them. Theirs was a lonely march to death – and yet how bravely and how patiently they fought to the end no tongue or pen can ever tell.
These were heroines – and whilst in village, hamlet, town, and city, from ocean to ocean, we have with stone and brass built memorials of every name, size, and kind in honor of our heroes – the mothers, the wives, and the daughters of that awful time, who toiled and suffered and died for their country, are ‘unwept, unhonored, and unsung.’
Not only did they suffer and fight and toil thus in their lonely and desolate homes, but these ministers of compassion, these angels of pity, whenever possible, went to the battlefields to moisten the parched tongues, to bind the ghastly wounds, and to soothe the parting agonies alike of friend and foe, and to catch the last whispered messages of love from dying lips…
She was 105 yrs old when she died of a broken neck suffered from falling off a horse while hunting. I am so proud to have this brave women in my family history. My grandmother Dorothy Couch-Amick would of loved this story and I see Kerenhappuch's strength in my grandmother as she was a strong women as well as my mom Ruth Robertson-Kubberness.
I will talk about the Morehead line in my next blog.
This woman was truly deserving of a statue for her bravery!
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